Mark Reckless, the former Conservative Party member of Parliament for Rochester and Strood (L) and Kelly Tolhurst, the Conservative Party's candidate in the Rochester's by-election (Reuters) / Reuters

Britain’s Euroskeptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) and David Cameron’s Conservative Party embarked on a bitter Rochester and Strood by-election battle on Thursday, brought about by a former Tory MP’s controversial defection earlier this year.

Mark Reckless’ decision
to abandon the Conservatives surfaced just a few weeks after his
close friend and colleague Douglas Carswell did the same in
Clacton. In a landmark victory for UKIP in early October,
Carswell seized a by-election seat and became the party’s first
MP.

Thursday’s by-election is predicted to earn UKIP its second
Commons seat.

Polling stations opened at 7am in the north Kent constituency,
with the Conservatives and UKIP deemed frontrunners. Both parties
have campaigned ferociously in the run-up to the election to woo
the loyalty of voters.

The polls are due to close at 10pm, with the result expected
early on Friday.

In 2010, Reckless won the coveted Kent seat for the Conservative
Party with a landslide 49.2 percent of the vote. Ed Miliband’s
Labour Party lagged behind in second place with a mere 28.5
percent, followed by the Liberal Democrats, the English Democrats
and the Greens.

On Wednesday evening, Reckless ramped up pressure on his former
Tory bosses, warning a further two Conservative MPs were also
contemplating leaving the governing party and embracing UKIP if
he emerges victorious on Friday.

A further string of defections would likely spark a crisis at
Number 10 over an ongoing erosion of the Conservatives’ southern
strongholds as the countdown to next year’s general election
ensues. It could also threaten Cameron’s leadership of the party
itself.

Today we ask: will the Rochester and Strood by-election be one
small step for Man, one giant leap for nominative determinism?
#Reckless

On Wednesday, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles expressed full
confidence in a Tory victory. He also dismissed Reckless’
suggestion of further defections.

Speaking to the Guardian, he said the Conservatives had rescued
Britain’s economy from the brink of meltdown, while UKIP’s
proposed policies are regressive and rooted firmly in the past.

Nevertheless, Reckless’ warning of further defections has
triggered a torrent of speculation about who the non-committal
Tories might be. Peter Bone, a staunchly Euroskeptic Conservative
MP for Wellingborough, has been hailed as a possibility. He is
due to argue at a debate in Cambridge on Thursday that UKIP has
been a welcomed presence on Britain’s political horizon.

Probed by the Guardian on whether he might defect, Bone failed to
deny the possibility. Rather, he called for members of Nigel
Farage’s party to forge a closer alliance with the Conservatives
on Britain’s center-right stage.

Another potential defector is John Baron, MP for Basildon and
Billericay, who previously declared he would “never say
never” to the possibility of defection.

Following his questioning of Cameron on Wednesday about
government action on veterans of nuclear testing, Baron was
afforded an attentive prime ministerial response in the House of
Commons.

A UKIP victory will be highly embarrassing for the PM in light of
his former promise to do everything in his power to ensure this
seat remains Tory. Tolhurst described the by-election as a
“two-horse race.”

She called upon voters to cast a strategic vote on Thursday,
suggesting anyone who normally votes for Labour, the Lib Dems or
otherwise should back her unless they wish to “wake up to a
UKIP MP on Friday 21 November.”

By contrast, UKIP staff
and politicians gathered this morning for a somewhat premature
victory lap of Rochester town in a specially-branded bus.

#Reckless:
Immigrants, go back to your own country. This, right here and
now, the ugly lurch to the far right. Politicians, wake up.